Top 65 colleges with the highest ROI

Once again, Payscale has released their annual report ranking colleges based on their return on investment, and once again technical schools and private liberal arts colleges came out on top, for the most part.

There were, however, some major changes to this year's list. According to their website, Payscale has "refined" their methodology to more accurately reflect the ROI potential of a given school.

The most significant change from last year's metric being the switch from tracking the 30-year Net ROI to the 20-year.

Why the change? According to Payscale, income increases largely level off at age 40, and since most students graduate at or around 20 they decided including the extra 10 years in their Net ROI report wasn't necessary.

Because of this some school's saw dramatic changes in their positioning. Brigham Young University, for example, experienced a shift of almost 20 points based on the new metrics.

In fact, BYU is the highest ranking Utah school on the list, coming in at no. 65. Weber State is the second highest, at no. 195. University of Utah, Utah State, Westminster and Southern Utah University were all also ranked, coming in at 204, 215, 552 and 829 respectively.

So which colleges have a better ROI than BYU? You might be surprised by who is, and isn't, included in the top 65.

Utah Falcon if you read the article really slow then you will understand it is
the monetary investment the students/parents pay to attend the
college/university. The students at the AF Academy don't pay room and
board, nor do they pay tuition or for books. You and I the taxpayer foot those
bills. So, no the AF Academy would not be on this list.

As far as
Utah I am surprised. That would certainly make one rethink attending there.

Very interesting and informative. Thanks. I notice that many of the top ten on
this list are schools of technology- engineering heavy programs. I don't
imagine too many schools with only a few majors heavy in Shakespeare or Latin
would crack the top 1,000 (if such a school existed). What I would really like
to see is a list of ROI by major. See if you can get to work on that. :)

Poorly organized listing. Each college may have different tuition costs but
should not occupy two spots in the list. I also don't believe that Harvey
Mudd college really returns more than Stanford or Harvard or Caltech even as a
percentage when earnings power is related over 30 years. I was surprised that
those three were so high up the list because my experience with friends that
have attended those while I was at BYU was that I spent roughly a tenth the
money that they did at those three. Absent from the list of top 100 is Notre
Dame; a friends daughter went there at about thrice the cost of my attending BYU
(25 years later) and I am sure her 30 year monetary prospect is at least as good
as Stanford or Texas Tech.

Obviously whoever did these calculations is not a math major. You have schools
that cost $140000 than another scool with an "ROI" slightly more and yet
it is ranked higher. At normal interest rates you would need $20000 per year
more for at least 20 years to break even. I would strongly suggest a the U,
USU, Weber or the Y over many of the schools listed. This looks like fuzzy
math.

LOL. My J.C. chemistry professor was a graduate of Harvey Mudd College. He
commented once, that during the 50s and 60s, they would have a "battle of
the slide rules" with Caltech. Harvey Mudd won every year.

I agree with another poster that it would be interesting to see the ROI on
specific majors. I say this because we all know that some schools are better
than others in certain areas and this obviously affects the ROI. BYU is a top
business school, while Weber State is probably the best nursing school, Utah the
best science and health, Utah state the best engineering, etc. I tell my own
children that what you want to major in is as, or more important than what
university you decide to attend. For instance, I wouldn't suggest to my own
student to attend BYU if they decided on a health science career.

Regardless of whether it is a church or state or any
other kind of subsidized school, the survey takes into account the actual cost
to the student and/or their parents to attend each particular college.
That's what those attending actually care about.

It is totally
predictable that ute students/alumni would find all kinds of "issues"
with this survey (fuzzy match, etc.). Sometimes the truth just plain hurts...
especially when it shows your rival doing something better. When that happens,
excuses a dime a dozen.

This can't be right... and here are a few reasons why:1. There's
more schools from the WCC than the PAC-12 on the list2. Most of these
schools are named after PEOPLE or FRUIT, not States or Cities (Who is Harvey
Mudd, and why would you name a school after a Mellon?)3. The vast majority
of these schools don't have a recognizable Athletics program or any
athletic program at all; esp. Football (and NO Rowing, Fencing and Synchronized
Swimming are not sports they're Olympic events)4. Univ. of Utah is
not on the list, and we all know they put more emphasis on education than
athletics5. BYU is #65, and everyone knows they're #16.
Multiple schools showed photos of the same "student" (Texas A&M, Cal
Poly, Embry-Riddle), or didn't even have a photo of their school at all
(IIT, Worcester)7. And finally, there are several schools on the list
TWICE, and that's cheating.

Is BYU really now $20k per year? I haven't thought tuition in 20 years but
still...$20k annually seems high. BYU's website shows the LDS semester
cost at $2355 and non LDS at $4710 per semester. I'm sure they're
factoring in living expenses as well then, but that still comes out at $1274 per
month for a calendar year of living plus two semesters of tuition at fulltime
student rates. An LDS student could attend two semesters and two terms (year
round) and still spend $1077/mo on living expenses to hit $20k annually, but
that student would graduate in fewer than 4 full years. If graduation requires
~120 credit hours and if the student takes close to the min number of credits
required to be considered fulltime the student should graduate in ~3 years, thus
putting the actual cost of BYU for an LDS student at ~$60k.

If you made a list of schools with the highest percentage of unemployed
graduates (think housewives), BYU would likely be #1. If you factor the
unemployed by choice into the ROI list, how high would BYU move?

Not surprising. BYU is heavily subsidized through tithing dollars giving them
very low tuition. While I'm sure the University of Utah is better than
average in this category, it's obviously not going to compete with
something like that.

I love all the Utes complaining about tithes being used to pay for tuition at
BYU as they attend their publically funded college.

My recollection
is that a large portion of the tuition offset is from BYU Foundation. I could be
wrong. In any regard, those of you who worship UofU should be willing to spend
more for your education and not mandate the citizens of the state of Utah pay
for your tuition.

-as several writers mentioned, the results of the
calculations do seem fuzzy, at best. (The study's writers used a federal
program perspective, possibly)

-the U is a fine regional university
with high marks in several areas of study

-BYU is a national
university that is unique to the point that it hardly attracts anyone outside
the LDS Church. Although close geographically to other state schools, it offers
education and lifestyle ops that are not found virtually anywhere else.

I would love to see a list showing the ROI for different majors.Let's
see what an MBA or Engineering degree return vs any variety of ethnic studies or
other degrees that have zero value in the market place.

Ute Alumni, State schools are heavily subsidized by state taxpayers, hence the
reason that there is an in-state tuition vs. an out-of-state tuition. There
really is no difference. BYU has an LDS tuition vs. a non-LDS tuition just the
same. The value and ROI is based on the cost to the student and parent.

If BYU has an annual ROI of 10.9% whilst Harvard and MIT and other more
expensive colleges are around 8%...then I'm choosing BYU for my kids.
Paying $80k instead of $230K something makes more sense to me....maybe the 20
year ROI is lower due to all these graduates going on missions or refusing out
of state jobs in the big corporations? Still almost 11% compares well to 8%of
MIT.

Here's the most astounding statistic (and the true reflection of
"best" ROI): Only six universities in the nation had a higher annual
%ROI than BYU, and then only by 1% or less. The true measure of an investment is
not the bottom-line return, but the *percentage* return. It's much more
impressive to make $5k on a $10k investment than $10k on $100k.

Please Deseret News, this is not a list. It's a slide show. It takes at
least 10 minutes to page through, when with an actual list I could learn all I
need to know in 10 seconds. Please stop wasting your readers' time! Give us
lists when that is what is really needed and what is implied by your lead-in.

Some commenters are taking this survey far too seriously. I mean, please, South
Dakota School of Mines higher than Harvard University? I don't doubt that
this is the result of their data. BUT HOW RELIABLE IS THEIR DATA? Let's put
it this way, I wouldn't use this list for anything other than
entertainment. I certainly wouldn't use it for any decision making
purposes.

Having worked as a faculty member at a very large land grant university for 30
years, I have come to the conclusion that it's not where you go for your
education, it's what you do with it after you get out. There are only three
land grant schools on the list, Texas A and M, Cornell and Virginia Tech. But I
am sure that a degree at any one of these places is not worth 10 times less that
a degree from a school that cost 10x more. I don't know who makes up
these kind of lists, but they are meaningless overall. Many of the posters
before me have pointed out a lot of the problems with lists like this.

Why isn't BYU higher? In my opinion the ROI percentage is the most
important number, and BYU was probably about #10 out of all the schools. I know
there are other factors, but it doesn't make sense to me that you pay
$80,000 and get $700,000 back from BYU, versus paying $230,000 and get $700,000
back from most other schools, and BYU gets ranked lower.

As for the
utes, it doesn't surprise me that they are ranked so low. Not that they
aren't a good institution, but when it comes to this particular category,
they aren't (and never have been) very good. A lot of this is because many
people go to utah for medical careers, which are very expensive up front and it
still takes a while before you make a lot of money. And since this article was
using stats only up to 40 years old, many utah graduates are still probably
working their way up in the medical field by that time.